Poster #32 - Working Harder or Getting Smarter? Children’s Intuitive Theories about Academic Progress

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

Children from age 4 believe that academic performance relies on both effort and ability (Muenks & Miele, 2017; Muradoglu & Cimpian, 2020). However, one’s academic performance is never fixed – as such, for children, how do effort and ability play a role when someone makes academic progress? In other words, when someone scores higher than before, does it mean they become smarter, work harder, or neither? Here, we investigate children’s theories about academic progress concerning changes in ability and effort.
Children (N = 70, M(SD)Age = 10.14) were introduced to three students whom all took two exams (one at a time, same-sex with the participant, see Figure 1). The three characters had different academic profiles: one making progress (“not so good in the first exam”, “really good in the second exam”), one having a decline (“really good in the first exam”, “not so good in the second exam”), and one maintaining their performance (“really good in the first exam”, “really good in the second exam”). After the description of each character, children were asked whether the character became more so, stayed the same, or less so in four different traits: “smart”, “hard-working”, “pretty”, and “nice”. Children picked their choice by selecting one of the three pre-introduced signs “+” (more so), “O” (stayed the same), or “-” (less so, See Figure 1).
We conducted an ordinal regression model using trait (smart, hard-working, pretty, nice), condition (progress, decline, maintenance), and age to predict children’s choices. We found significant main effects of both trait and condition (ps < .001), as well as their interaction (p < .001). There was no significant effect of age (ps > .703). To dissect the trait*condition interaction, first, children attached effort and ability, but not niceness and prettiness with academic progress. Specifically, children believed that academic progress is associated with working harder and becoming smarter, but not becoming nicer or prettier (ps < .001). Second and importantly, compared to smartness, changes in efforts were believed to be more associated with changes in academic performance. Specifically, children responded that the character who made academic progress was working harder compared to getting smarter (B = 2.55, p = .016), and the character who declined on academic performances was working less hard compared to getting less smart (B = -3.65, p < .001). Children did not differentially attach changes in ability and effort when viewing the character who performed well on both tests (B = .256, p = .614).
In summary, our results showed that school-age children reason about academic progress as reflecting changes in both effort and ability; and importantly, they are more likely to attach changes in efforts, rather than ability, to changes in academic performance. These findings contribute to our knowledge of children’s intuitive theories about performance at school and offer implications for how to best cultivate children’s motivation to learn.

Authors

• Yuhan Wang, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Xin Sun, University of British Columbia (UBC)